According to a recent report, two
scam forks of Ethereum are appropriating the private keys of users. The alleged
scam forks are Ethereum Classic Vision (ETN) and Altcoins Ethereum Nowa (ETCV).
The scam forks are appropriating the private keys of users that are trying to
redeem their forked coins.

The alleged scam was hidden in a
report to Cointelegraph by the development team of Guarda Wallet on the 11th of
January. The Ethereum Nowa project’s official site – that does not contain a
whitepaper – discloses the process through which users are supposed to engage
in to obtain the tokens.

Ethereum Nowa Vision (ETCV) Is a Scam Hard Fork/Airdrop

As stated in the website, users
are expected to first send ether to an address. After which, they are supposed
to export the private key and redeem the digital currency using the dedicated
online tool. A user on Etherscan – the block explorer of Ethereum – commented
on the earlier mentioned address.

The user said that the address is
engaging in scam hard fork, and he warned other users not to send any token to
the wallet address. The online tool dedicated to claiming the tokens seems to be a clone of MyEtherWallet (MEW) – a
very popular online Ethereum wallet.

The major difference between the
cloned and the original wallet interface is that the options that allow users to choose how they can access the
wallet are grayed out, except the one that lets them paste their private keys.
In addition, some web browsers even flagged the tool as a “Deceptive Website.”

On analyzing the code, the
development team of Guarda Wallet found out that the private key isn’t only
being processed by the tool, but also being forwarded to a remote server. It
was also stated in the report that Ethereum Nowa “is a way for criminals to get
your private details and get access to your wallet.”

According to the whitepaper of
the project, the hard fork of Ethereum Classic Vision was supposed to happen on
the 11th of January at 20:00 GMT. There are links on the website to a
downloadable Linux and Windows wallet together with a web tool.

Close to the
“Claim fork” button, the site states, “Regardless
of which authorized wallet you use to hold your Ethereum, your free Ethereum
Classic Vision (ETCV) will be initially sent to the official Ethereum Classic
Vision wallet. While we are presently in negotiations with a number of popular
wallets, at the moment of the fork we will not be able to send ETCV to those
wallets due to certain differences in the algorithms used.”

The team of Guarda Wallet noted
that while this project appears to be more solid than ETN, after thorough
scrutiny, they discovered that the team of ETCV also appropriated the private
keys of the users.

In a statement, the team said: “The analysis of the code carried out by our
team has shown that the piece of code provided actually sends private key data
on the server of Ethereum Classic Vision, masking it as an API token.”

Ethereum (ETH) Price Today – ETH / USD

Ethereum (ETH) is currently worth
$128 after a decrease of about one percent over the past twenty-four hours. The
third-largest digital currency currently has a market cap of $13.06 billion and
a trading volume of $1.84 billion over the past twenty-four
hours.